The best way I know how to describe the world/our existence is this: it’s all grey area. So, when we promote an opinion or idea we are inevitably incorrect in some capacity. How, then, do people convince others that they are right? How do they lobby their beliefs and get others to join their side? Confidence.
“Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.”
I agree with JW Krutch in this statement. Logic in the Aristotelian sense is the study of the argument. It is not the study of truth, or of fact, or even a measure of one’s knowledge. When you perfect your argument, you perfect your logic, regardless of how technically correct your idea is.
So it is the layout of your argument, the presentation of your ideas, (your “confidence”) which determines the success of your logic. Logical reasoning as we’ve learned it consists of a premise, another premise, and a conclusion. The difficult part is not composing a conclusion. The difficulty rests in getting your audience to agree with your premises.
If with my confidence I can convince my audience that
All red is green
and
All green is white,
then my audience will inevitably and unfailingly agree that all red is white.
Obviously that’s not true. But with the confidence I employed both in constructing my argument and delivering it, I have successfully convinced an audience that two completely separate colors are the same. That is effective reasoning.
So ultimately, we should not view a persuasive syllogism as “the truth”, but we can credit the composer with having the strength and confidence to win the argument.
Your argument is unclear as whether the loss of truth in the argument should be credited to logic--if logic is what makes the argument wrong. If so, wouldn't it be the premises that make the logic wrong, and not the logic itself? Or even if that is what you meant in the first place, how do we know that logic even works, or if we just blindly accept it as truth?
ReplyDeleteMy argument had nothing to do with what loss of truth should be "credited" to--my point was that truth and logic are two separate things; that we in fact should not blindly accept deductive reasoning as truth, because they are inherently different areas.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your argument. Logic and truth are completely separate things. A perfectly logical syllogism can be made for any situation whether it actually is true or false.
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